Hey, Your Nose is on Fire!

The Daily Grind Table of Contents      Is this turning into Paradise Lost around here or something? I mean, yeesh!      Still, it'll be the new year when we next we meet, so enjoy making the transition!

The Daily Grind Table of Contents      Ah, the mechanics of multiple narrators... It's all rather confusing, really.

The Daily Grind Table of Contents      If Tiny Tim was s'pposed to pop out and say, "Cyrios bless us, every one!" then it looks like he's running a little late...      But I will say that a computer with a properly functioning CPU fan makes more noise than I recall, though it's nice to have all the pieces of the vast Daily Grind machine back up and whirring. As for me, I should be done singing by the time you read this: just three Christmas Eve masses for me this year as well as our regular carol service with the trumpets before the 10PM mass. So I've got Christmas Day off!

The Terebinth Story Archive      I guess this is Christmas-y? Kind of?

The Daily Grind Table of Contents      You'd better hurry up a little, Mrs. Teasdale: there's only three weeks left in the storyline!

He saunters, not a hint of awkwardness About his movements, flowing sweet as fire. Dolores, trying not to stare, selects A protein bar, a heated argument Among her schoolmates raising ruffled fur And growls. The guy's a feline, after all. The student body's ninety-eight percent canine. The whole school's aware. He hears them, Casey does, their yips and all Alive with bitter scents of awkwardness. Remaining smooth, he doesn't look, the fur Beneath his shirt on edge, a tickling fire He knows. It follows matching arguments From other schools his science course selects. Universities should be more universal. "Should" is the key word. In class, Dolores carefully selects A seat in back of Casey, watching all The rest digress, off-topic arguments Concerning species, full of awkwardness. The room of canines almost seems on fire With ears and whiskers folded close to fur. Students of science should be— There's that "should" again. Stupid subjunc...

The Daily Grind Table of Contents      I don't know if I'd call what the Lady Psychopomp has on her face a snout, per se, but that might just be me...

So over the summer:      I took a poetry-writing workshop sponsored by Crystal Lake Publishing.      And yes, I know: I've been writing poetry for decades. There's been at least one poem in the Terebinth comics every week for months now, and I did that whole Plague Year Poems thing where I wrote a poem a day from March 22, 2020 through June 7, 2021. So why the heck was I taking a poetry-writing workshop?      The official answer? It was strictly for the money. I write pretty much nothing but rhyming, metered poetry, and there are quite a few editors out there who simply aren't interested in seeing that sort of thing anymore. So if I wanted to broaden my markets, I needed to learn how to write non-rhyming, non-metered stuff that both I and the editors in question would consider to be poetry.      The unofficial answer? I really doubted that I could figure out what that sor...

The Daily Grind Table of Contents      But I'm sure it'll be fine. I mean, it's almost Christmas!

The Terebinth Story Archive      Ah, bugs in love. Or whatever this is...

The Daily Grind Table of Contents      Since this talking animal world doesn't seem to have monkeys, I'm guessing they also don't have monkey wrenches. That's just a guess, of course...

The Daily Grind Table of Contents      The regular computer that I've been using to put together these comics for maybe the past eight or nine years told me Sunday night that it could no longer detect its CPU fan. And since two of my last three attempts to put a new CPU fan into a computer resulted in blown-out motherboards, I'm thinking that this time, I might wanna take it to a professional for replacement. Which means these pages for the foreseeable future will be scanned at the library rather than at home.

The Daily Grind Table of Contents      All sorts of shocking revelations!

The Terebinth Story Archive      It's always nice when everyone joins in the conversation. Well, almost everyone...

      The latest issue of Space & Time magazine , #145, has a sonnet by me lurking within its pages. I wrote it, I'm afraid, mostly to be ornery.      I swear, the history of art in general would have a lot fewer pages if it weren't for artists who, being told something shouldn't be done, set out to do it anyway just to show 'em. I mean, really, the only reason I've been doing my two webcomics for all these years is 'cause I can't draw. If I could scratch out a picture of a squirrel that actually looked like a squirrel, I can't imagine I'd have stuck with the picture-drawing thing for as long as I have. It's just sheer cussedness on my part that keeps me going, a bone-deep desire to yell at the world, "Yeah, I can't draw, but here's some pictures anyway! So there!"      It's also why I write talking animal stories after being told that editors aren't interested in such juvenile material, and why I wri...

The Daily Grind Table of Contents      In case I haven't linked to the relevant pages recently, Mrs. Teasdale and Jolene saved the nine princesses during the Nulla Lucis's rampage way back near the end of our 24th storyline, " A Long, Long Trail A-Winding ," and the princesses took over running the Airborne Web four-and-a-half months later near the end of our 72nd storyline, " Crash Positions ."

The Daily Grind Table of Contents      Strategy! Or is this "tactics?"

The Daily Grind Table of Contents      Oh, good. I was waiting for the kicking to start.

The Terebinth Story Archive      This is something like the 4th or 5th rondeau redouble' that I've written since Hallowe'en. I dunno why this form's gotten it's claws so deeply into me lately...

The Daily Grind Table of Contents      It must involve the eyelids and a variety of Morse Code. That's just a guess on my point, of course...